A Good Day

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm finding that my emotions are a bit up and down during this lockdown.  Some days I feel good and feel like I was productive and made good use of the time at home, some days I feel less so and feel a bit frustrated. Wednesday, however, was a good day.

I did a super long dog walk.  I think I was out for about 2 hours all told, but it was enjoyable. On the route, I started playing Joe Wicks's PE class for the day on my phone and found myself joining in with some of the exercises, which felt like progress. The dog wasn't so happy.  I don't think she liked it that I was focussing on something other than her.  It was sweet in that Joe got kids to devise the routines for him as homework and today's I thought was very good. I would happily re-do it at home. (Well, most of it, there were some exercises I didn't like, such as burpees and I did feel a touch silly doing bunny hops!)

I think part of the problem I'm having at the moment, (aside from deeply missing my gym and dance classes), is that the dog walk seems to be doubling up as my exercise for the day and it's not really very energetic or satisfying in this respect which I find frustrating. I'd like to go out a second time on my bike and have a good old bike ride, but I'm not sure that is acceptable under current restrictions. Maybe I'll just have to continue doing as I've done today and do the odd exercise class or floor exercises at home. I guess I'm lucky I have a dog to walk at times like this, as it does make you go out and get some fresh air once every day. My boss at work would love to be able to walk a dog now we're on furlough.

In the afternoon I decided to put on a new to me boxed vinyl set and listen to some swing music.  Whilst doing so, I picked up some patchwork projects that I haven't touched for months, which felt good. Hopefully, now I've restarted them, it shouldn't be too difficult to maintain the momentum and actually finish them during this lockdown. At least it would feel like I've done something productive. I'll post when I have completed them.

Tonight, I made us a tasty vegetable stew with vegetable suet dumplings. It was an easy way to use some vegetables from the fridge, including some wilting celery. It was better than the one I made last week, the difference being that I used a casserole mix to flavour it. In actual fact, it was a Chicken Chasseur mix that I had in the cupboard.  I was going to donate it to the food bank, on account of us not eating meat anymore, along with a few other mixes for meat dishes, but looking on the back of the packets, I spotted that they were actually suitable for vegetarians/vegans.  Who knew.  Hence, I decided to keep them and use them instead. In my defence, I don't think the food banks are actually taking food at the moment here.  I think they prefer monetary donations, because of the risks associated with the virus.

We've been watching a new limited series on Netflix for the past few nights, called Unorthodox, about an Orthodox Hassidic Jewish community in New York.  It's really good. It's interesting to us, as there is a large community not far from where we live, near where we had our last allotment. It's interesting to learn a bit more about their culture. We watched the final episode and an additional programme about the making of the series last night, which was almost as good as the series itself.  We're now looking for something else to watch.

We recently watched and loved This Country, a comedy series that was on UK TV. We were sad when it finished the other week, as it was such a tonic in these strange times.  I think we're going to go back and watch the earlier series on iPlayer, as we didn't watch them first time around. It's so funny and so English. Have you found any good series to watch on lockdown? Let me know.